Structural Theology™ /
Structural Theologian™

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The eight sections below contain the complete material of Structural Theology™ and Structural Theologian™. Select any section to open its full reading.

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Section One

Structural Theology™

Structural Theology™ is an integrative field that examines religious and theological questions through the structures, relationships, dependencies, contexts, and patterns connecting sacred texts, doctrines, beliefs, religious traditions, historical developments, philosophical and metaphysical concepts, and other relevant domains of knowledge.

Structural Theology may examine a single religious tradition on its own, multiple traditions comparatively, or relationships across religious traditions when those relationships are relevant to the question under examination.

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Section Two

Structural Examination Within a Religious Tradition

Each religious tradition can be examined as a theological structure in its own right.

Within Christianity, for example, Structural Theology may examine biblical texts and their relationships to one another; original languages and translation; textual and historical development; doctrines; theological schools and interpretations; historical and cultural contexts; philosophical and metaphysical assumptions; concepts of God, creation, human nature, sin, salvation, incarnation, resurrection, free will, morality, death, and other relevant questions; and findings from other domains of knowledge when they bear upon the theological question being investigated.

The same structural method can be applied independently to Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, or another religious tradition.

The purpose is not necessarily to compare that tradition with another religion. The purpose may be to understand the internal architecture of the tradition itself.

Structural Theology therefore asks how the texts, teachings, concepts, interpretations, histories, assumptions, and doctrines within a tradition relate to one another.

A theological proposition does not exist independently of everything surrounding it. A belief concerning the nature of God or ultimate reality may affect beliefs about creation or existence. Those beliefs may affect understandings of human nature. Understandings of human nature may affect concepts of moral responsibility, suffering, salvation, liberation, enlightenment, death, transcendence, or humanity’s relationship with the divine.

Structural Theology follows those relationships.

It asks:

• Where does this belief sit within the theological structure?
• What supports it?
• What does it depend upon?
• What depends upon it?
• How does it relate to other texts, teachings, doctrines, interpretations, and relevant knowledge within the tradition?
• What changes elsewhere in the structure if this element changes?

In this way, an entire religious tradition—or a particular question within it—can be examined structurally without comparison to any other religion.

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Section Three

Sacred Texts as Structures

Structural Theology also examines sacred texts relationally.

A passage may be studied individually, but it is not necessarily interpreted as though it exists independently of the larger textual structure.

Relevant passages may be examined together. Language, translation, authorship, chronology, literary form, historical setting, manuscript traditions, interpretive history, and relationships among texts may all become relevant.

• Language
• Translation
• Authorship
• Chronology
• Literary form
• Historical setting
• Manuscript traditions
• Interpretive history
• Relationships among texts

The inquiry can move from an individual word or passage to a collection of texts, from those texts to doctrine, from doctrine to theological structure, and from theological structure to its broader implications.

The objective is not simply to determine what individual passages say.

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Section Four

Integration Across Relevant Domains

Structural Theology does not restrict theological inquiry according to conventional disciplinary boundaries.

Depending upon the question, relevant knowledge may come from biblical or sacred-text scholarship, theology, philosophy, metaphysics, history, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, psychology, neuroscience, sociology, comparative religion, religious studies, or other domains.

These disciplines are not required to be present in every structural inquiry.

A question that can be adequately examined through sacred texts, historical context, and theology does not require the artificial addition of neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, or another discipline merely for the sake of appearing integrative.

Conversely, when information from another domain materially bears upon the theological question, a disciplinary boundary is not treated as a reason to exclude it.

Structural integration therefore means bringing together what belongs together for the question being examined, not bringing everything into every inquiry.

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Section Five

Structural Examination Across Religious Traditions

Structural Theology can also move across religious traditions when the inquiry calls for it.

Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and other traditions have developed different languages, symbols, scriptures, doctrines, philosophies, practices, and conceptual structures for addressing fundamental questions concerning existence, ultimate reality, human nature, consciousness, morality, suffering, death, transcendence, salvation, liberation, enlightenment, and humanity’s relationship with what is understood as divine or ultimate.

Structural comparison may examine where traditions converge and diverge, whether apparently similar teachings rest upon different foundations, whether apparently different teachings perform comparable functions within their respective systems, and how language, culture, history, translation, interpretation, and doctrinal development have influenced those structures.

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Section Six

Theology as Architecture

Structural Theology treats theology as more than a collection of independent propositions.

Changing the interpretation of one text, doctrine, assumption, or concept may therefore affect numerous other elements connected to it.

Structural Theology examines those relationships in order to identify coherence, contradiction, convergence, divergence, development, dependency, and consequence—whether within one religious tradition, across several traditions, or within a particular theological question.

Structural examination also evaluates the integrity of the resulting theological structure. A doctrine, interpretation, or theological proposition may be examined not only for its individual meaning, but for whether it remains coherent when placed in relationship with the larger body of relevant texts, teachings, historical evidence, philosophical premises, and other applicable knowledge.

Where contradictions, dependencies, inconsistencies, or structural tensions emerge, those relationships become part of the theological inquiry rather than being isolated from it. Structural Theology therefore does not merely identify connections. It examines whether those connections and the theological structures they produce remain coherent under broader examination.

Its concern is therefore not only:

It also asks:

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Section Seven

Structural Theologian™

A Structural Theologian™ is one who engages in Structural Theology™, examining religious and theological questions through their structures, relationships, dependencies, contexts, and connections across all relevant domains of knowledge.

A Structural Theologian may work entirely within a single religious tradition, examine multiple traditions comparatively, or move between those levels according to the question being investigated.

The designation does not simply describe a theologian who studies multiple religions or possesses knowledge across multiple subjects.

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Section Eight

Definitions

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